Literacy-as-event: accounting for relationality in literacy
research
BURNETT, Cathy <http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6087-244X> and MERCHANT, Guy <http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8436-7675>
Available from Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/18855/
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BURNETT, Cathy and MERCHANT, Guy (2018). Literacy-as-event: accounting for relationality in literacy research. Discourse, 1-12.
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1 Literacy-as-event: accounting for relationality in literacy research
Cathy Burnett & Guy Merchant
Cathy Burnett
Sheffield Institute of Education, Faculty of Development and Society, 10107 Arundel Building, Charles Street, City Campus, Sheffield Hallam University, S1 2NE
Tel: 0114 225 3666 c.burnett@shu.ac.uk
Guy Merchant
Sheffield Institute of Education, Faculty of Development and Society, 10107 Arundel Building, Charles Street, City Campus, Sheffield Hallam University, S1 2NE
2 Literacy-as-event: accounting for relationality in literacy research
Abstract
Research in New Literacy Studies has demonstrated how literacy consists of multiple socially
and culturally situated practices illuminated through a focus on literacy events. Recently, this
sociocultural perspective has been complemented by relational thinking that views literacy as
an ongoing reassembling of the human and more-than-human. This conceptual article
proposes that, in exploring how relational thinking might be deployed in literacy research and
practice, it is helpful to re-visit conceptualisations of literacy events. Specifically it proposes
the notion of ‘literacy-as-event’ as a heuristic for thinking with the fluid and elusive nature of
meaning-making, elaborating on three propositions: 1. event is generated as people and
things come into relation; 2. what happens always exceeds what can be conceived and
perceived; 3. implicit in the event are multiple potentialities. Approaching literacy research
through engaging with literacy-as-event promotes an expansive, reflective, and imaginative
engagement with literacy practices that aligns with relational thinking.
Introduction
Existing research in New Literacy Studies (NLS) has highlighted the fact that literacy
consists of multiple socially and culturally situated practices (Barton, 2007). As patterns of
communication have shifted in response to a variety of factors, including technological
development, changing demographics and increased population mobility, literacies, together
3 diversify and evolve apace (Gillen, 2014). Researchers working in the NLS tradition have
spearheaded the development of innovative, creative methodologies that acknowledge this
change and complexity (see Albers et al., 2014). Their studies have generated nuanced,
multi-layered accounts of literacy practices in different sites. In doing so they have helped to
construct literacies, as more than the fixed set of transferable skills upheld by dominant
models of policy and educational practice, and have generated recommendations for literacy
education that challenge the predominance of a skills-based model (Mills et al., 2017).
Recently, a number of overlapping themes have emerged in literacy studies which complicate
this conceptualisation of literacy practices as socially and culturally situated providing routes
into thinking differently about literacy. Firstly, an interest in the field of Science and
Technology Studies has offered new theoretical directions for the work of literacy researchers
like Brandt and Clinton (2002) and Kell (2015). Drawing on the work of theorists such as
Latour (1987) and Law (1994), this strand sees texts, along with those who produce and
consume them, as part of dynamic heterogeneous networks with implications for how we
think about the local and the global (Brandt & Clinton, 2002) and the workings of literacy
and power (Kell, 2015). Such studies highlight how complex and inter-weaving sets of
sociomaterial relations help sustain certain ways of doing literacy (Budach et al., 2015), but
also how such relations must be constantly worked at; they are not fixed but continuously
re-made (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010). Secondly, inspired by the poststructuralist orientations of
Deleuze and Guattari (1988) and Massumi (2002), researchers have been drawn to the ways
in which literacies unfold in the moment (Leander & Boldt, 2013), how they are woven into
material and semiotic assemblages, and how affective intensities arise (Ehret, 2017). This
perspective critiques not only the psychological-cognitive framing of much state-mandated
4 design, which has been arguably the most influential pedagogical alternative arising from
sociocultural accounts (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000). Thirdly, Barad’s (2007) agential realism
and Bennett’s (2010) notion of vibrant matter, which emphasise the entanglements of
materiality, embodiment and subjectivity, have inspired literacy researchers to broaden their
account of what counts in meaning making in the lives of children, in non-formal and formal
educational contexts, and in doing so often challenge the very project of literacy itself (Rautio
& Jokinen, 2015; Theil, 2015).
Drawing on different strands of thought referred to variously under the umbrella terms of
posthumanism (Taylor, 2016), new materialism (Fox & Aldred, 2016) and sociomaterialism
(Fenwick & Landri, 2012), these perspectives orientate to literacy as an affective encounter
generated through an ongoing reassembling of the human and the more-than-human. This
thinking has foregrounded the liveliness of literacy practices, complicating readings of the
social and cultural by attending to fluidity, affect, and emergence. At the forefront of such
work, however, is a focus on what happens as people and things come into relation rather
than as separate pre-existing entities (Blackman & Venn, 2010). If literacy is understood as
emerging through an ongoing reassembling of the human and the more-than-human, then it
might be usefully seen as what Lenters (2016) calls an ‘affective encounter’; it is never an
isolated activity, but is always in relation with other people and things. Researching this sort
of relationality however is challenging. How can we gauge what is felt as well as observed?
If literacy is lived in relations, then how do we decide how to frame our studies? And how
can we approach not just what is, but what might be? In addressing such questions, literacy
researchers have worked with a variety of innovative approaches that are sensitive to
ephemerality and sensation, such as sensory ethnography (Ehret, 2017), and rhizomatic
5 & Rucker, 2017; Bailey, 2017). In sympathy with these approaches, this article proposes a
methodological move which builds on existing work in the field. Specifically, we revisit the
concept of event to suggest ways in which relational thinking might be deployed to reimagine
the fluid and emergent properties of literacies in ways that are helpful to both literacy
researchers and educators. We begin by outlining the pivotal role that ‘the literacy event’ has
played in literacy studies, before exploring some alternative ways in which event can be
conceptualised. This provides a platform for developing the notion of ‘literacy-as-event’
which we describe through three key propositions that reflect relational thinking. We go on to
illustrate the move from literacy event to literacy-as-event on a number of dimensions before
assessing the potential that this approach might have for literacy research and practice.
Literacy and event
The literacy event is a foundational concept in the NLS. As Street (2003) emphasised, a
literacy event is a situated instantiation of wider practices, patterned by power relations. We
can trace the event idea back to Heath (1982) who in turn drew on perspectives from
linguistic ethnography with origins in the work of Hymes (1972) and Jakobson (Waugh &
Monville-Burston, 1990). For Heath, literacy events are ‘occasions in which written language
is integral to the nature of participants’ interactions’ and in which those participants ‘follow
socially established rules for verbalizing what they know from and about the written material’
(1982, p.50). As Barton & Lee (2013, p.12) observe, the perspective underlines the
‘materiality of written language, through the physicality of texts’. This version of the literacy
event has helped researchers to articulate a sociocultural position capable of elaborating on
the all-important social interactions that happen around and through text. Indeed, richly
6 influential accounts of literacies of the last few decades (e.g. Heath, 1983; Barton &
Hamilton, 1998; Gillen, 2014).
From a relational perspective, however, the notion of literacy event is problematic, chiefly
because of its boundedness in time and space. The situatedness underpinning this model has
been complicated in recent years by a recognition that many literacies are ‘transcontextual’
(Brandt & Clinton, 2002) and involve the ‘traffic of texts’ across sites (Kell, 2011). While not
unique to practices involving digital media, this transcontextuality has come to the fore at a
time when many literacy events are mediated by mobile devices and involve multiple
participants and purposes in on/off screen activity across sites (Leander & McKim, 2003;
Davies, 2014); just as context is fluid, hybrid, or even collapsed as Marwick and boyd (2011)
claim, so literacy events are porous and permeable and may lack the patterned predictability
of Heath’s original conception (Authors, 2014). Moreover, the idea of patterned, rule-bound
literacy events sits uncomfortably with notions of liveliness, affect, fluidity and emergence.
In order to illustrate these points, we begin with a short vignette taken from a collaborative
study of virtual play undertaken with [Anonmysed for review]i in which we observed
children’s uses of iPads in an early years setting. In this vignette, based on Guy’s fieldnotes,
the researcher is sitting on the floor in the construction area participating in a play sequence
with four year-old Niamh.
Niamh, who was dressed as a witch yesterday, looks over at me. Her eyes light up. Do
you remember me? Of course I do. Are you here till lunch time? Yes. She walks off. I
look across at Kim who has a small group gathered around her. Then Niamh comes
7
Yes. I sort it out, and then she plonks herself down next to me and starts riffling
through her handbag. She pulls out a purse. I haven’t got any money and my daddy’s
coming. Can you look after the baby? Of course. I’ll be back in a minute. If she starts
crying….if she starts crying I’ll show her the iPad. In a few minutes she’s back. She
sits down, has a quick look at the shape matching app I’ve been sharing with the
baby. She opens the purse again. Oh no - they usually give me money, but they
haven’t. Just a minute I’ll give them a ring. She’s found a phone and she’s trying to
get hold of someone. It’s daddy’s phone she says, but I don’t know the password.
From this vignette we can identify play activity that appears to cohere around the interactions
between adult and child, and within this the sharing of the iPad might well be seen as a
literacy event, as an instantiation of socially situated practice. It could be seen as shaped
socially and culturally, building in part from Niamh and Guy’s memories of playing together
previously and their other experiences of adult-child and parent-child interactions. This
interaction could well form part of a wider analysis of literacy practices in the home, or more
specifically of translations of home literacy practices in early years settings. However, if we
applied Heath’s rubric of literacy events as socially established conventions of interacting
with written text we might struggle. While literacy arguably plays a part, there seems to be
more to account for, particularly from a relational perspective.
If we approach literacy as an affective encounter generated through an ongoing reassembling
of the human and the more-than-human, then we might read the vignette differently. We
might foreground the fluidity, affect and emergence generated by people and things as they
come into relation. The vignette might be viewed in terms of a convergence of bodies and
8 handbag, a role play about a thwarted financial transaction – and shifting movements to and
fro across the classroom floor. Guy, as researcher/amenable adult/iPad provider, is also
overtly part of these ongoing and changing human - non-human relations: perhaps the feeling
of being together is also generative of what goes on (author 1 & colleague, 2014). There are,
of course, challenges in approaching fluidity, affect and emergence through such data. The
narration is inevitably selective, positioned, and framed spatially and temporally. We are
presented, rather artificially, with a sequence of actions and interactions that are cut-off from
the flow of classroom life, a flow which could be divided up in different ways. However, this
brief re-reading hints at some ways through which literacy researchers might acknowledge
the ‘scrumpled geographies’ of literacy practices (Edwards, et al., 2009, p.496) whilst
accounting for ephemeral literacy moments as part of an ongoing flow of activity. In
interrogating this rather elusive complexity, we propose that it useful to complement literacy
event with an alternative heuristic that helps to articulate the methodological implications of
relational thinking for literacy studies.
From ‘Literacy Event’ to ‘Literacy-as-Event’
One of the challenges in thinking about event lies in the word’s semantic instability. In
everyday contexts we use event to describe occasions of quite varied importance and
magnitude. Some of these are fairly predictable (anniversaries, annual sporting contests etc.),
others momentous, precipitating major cultural or political conflict (e.g. Tinnamen Square,
the Arab Spring). A more technical meaning is found in science and philosophy in which an
event describes a singular occurrence (Oxford Dictionary, 2018). Most work in literacy
studies has tended to favour the idea of predictability. As Barton and Hamilton (1998, p.7)
9 keeping with Heath’s (1983) notion of interactions around text. But could we think
differently about event?
Firstly, it might be helpful to discount the ways in which event has been used to describe
political upheaval. So clearly, what Badiou (2005) refers to as event – variously described as
disruption to the social order, or a rip in the social fabric (Robinson, 2014) is not relevant to
our discussion. However, something about novelty could be salvaged, along the lines of
Derrida’s 'surprise, exposure, the unanticipatable' (Derrida, 2007, p.441). Could Massumi’s
(2015), ideas about the singularity of event as a never-to-be-repeated and vibrant co-mingling
of body, affect, material, social and semiotic forces work?
This might help us to argue for a different conception of event - one that sees event as fluid
and elusive, and allows not just for what happened, but for what might have been, and in
doing so accounts for potentialities. Rather than focusing on the analysis of events as
microcosms of more pervasive or invisible patterns and relationships, we propose an
approach to event more akin to that of Massumi who writes, ‘Nothing is prefigured in the
event. It is the collapse of structured distinction into intensity, or rules into paradox’ (p. 27)
or as Bourassa suggests,
It is important not to confuse the event with a state of things, with bodies and
materials that come together to produce results. Rather than being a set of bodies and
things, rather than being the mingling and colliding of these bodies, the event is the
10 In capturing the essence of this ontological move we propose literacy-as-event as a
generative heuristic to work with. Rather than using event to explore the social situatedness
of literacy as located in time and space, our conceptualisation of literacy-as-event rests on
three related ideas: 1. event is generated as people and things come into relation; 2. what
happens always exceeds what can be conceived and perceived; and 3. implicit in the event
are multiple potentialities, including multiple possibilities for what might materialise as well
as what does not. Below we consider each of these in turn.
1.Event is generated as people and things come into relation
In our earlier vignette we illustrated how people and things (Guy, Niamh, doll, iPad etc.)
came into relation as events unfolded, and how these unfolding relations helped to propel
events. Relational thinking foregrounds other kinds of movements, too. For example, the
following vignette (based on Cathy’s fieldnotes) describes what happened to one iPad over
the course of an hour.
The iPad has been left on the floor in front of the basket. Guy picks it up, taps it
awake, opens the Fireworks app and shows it to Bobby and George. George takes it
and places it flat on top of the yellow iPad basket, where he bangs it and bangs it with
his flat hand. I'm not sure if the excitement is in the fireworks or the banging or both.
Later I notice that the iPad must have fallen off the basket a bit, because now it’s
resting half on the basket and half on Bobby's foot. George picks it up and passes it so
it's in front of Bobby. I THINK he moves to take Bobby’s arm to guide him to swipe
the screen or tap. Just at that moment, Guy reaches across and taps something on the
11
then heads over to get my pen, which he takes over to the iPad and uses to swipe from
screen to screen. Then abandons it. Louisa wanders over, sits down by it and starts to
tap. She swipes and swipes. Then picks it up, strokes the back, holds it, presses it,
screams - aaaggghhh- then hands it to Guy and sits next to him. 'Where's Peppa Pig'
he asks. She taps the Peppa Pig app which opens with its familiar tune, presses it,
giggles, looks up and giggles again. An exchange of delight.
Again, we could identify literacy events: Guy’s invitation to play the Fireworks app, Louisa’s
engagement with Peppa Pig, or George’s apparent mashup up of mark-making and swiping.
We could draw parallels between these and other similar events, tracing different ways in
which stories were shared, or pen/iPad mergings occurred across the piece. However, in a
shift from the socially and culturally situated, we could also explore the emerging and
evolving relations between people, places and things, foregrounding not just how people take
up things as part of meaning making but how materiality shapes meaning making. We might
focus on what was happening in between such events, the moments of inactivity, and
apparently random actions and interruptions (Moberg, 2017). Doing so, we might sense the
obdurate materiality of the iPad as a thing to be passed, pressed, taken, or simply ‘there’ - or
how the iPad itself shapes what happens, offering up possibilities just by being available or in
the way. Reviewing video footage at the end of each day, for example, we found that iPads
had sometimes archived video that we found difficult to tag to children’s activity: long blurry
footage that did not seem to be about anything much, generated perhaps when iPads were
accidentally left on:
There’s been trouble overnight. 0379 has been secretly filming the other iPads. You
12
really long movie of nothing much at all. It makes Warhol’s film of John Giorno
sleeping look like an action movie! How did that happen? It certainly wasn’t in the
plan, and we don’t have permissions for that.
Such data take us out of the realm of patterned predictable activity and invite us to engage
with the unpredictable and perhaps irreproducible. A focus on literacy-as-event prompts us to
focus on inactivity, absence and the erratic as well as activity, presence and regularity. Such
relations are difficult to track, and their effects may well be felt rather than thought.
Moreover, as we explore further in the next section, there is always much in event that
escapes our grasp (Manning, 2011).
2. What happens always exceeds what can be conceived and perceived
Holding together multiple relations involves a constant re-framing. It does this partly through
sensitising us to affect. We might read our classroom vignettes, as Hollett and Ehret (2016)
do in their analysis of media making, in terms of ‘affective atmospheres’ as subtle rhythms
pulse across the room and as bodies and things come into relation moment by moment. Or we
might catch how traces of different times and places play out in what happens, and how these
moments ripple into other times and places. We could foreground other stories that weave
through these narratives: the early years educational policies that play through certain
practices, or the industrial and commercial processes, and associated working practices and
environmental consequences, through which things – toys, baskets, carpets, and iPads - came
to be present, or even the micro-ecologies of headlice, mites, bacteria and other living beings
13 Thinking relationally prompts us to keep interrogating what is going on and to seek out other
stories of what is folded into the flow of activity. For example, Greenpeace’s Guide to
Greener Electronics argues that,
There is no question that smartphones, PCs, and other computing devices have
changed the world and our day-to-day lives in incredible ways. But behind this
innovative 21st-century technology lie supply chains and manufacturing processes
still reliant on 19th-century sources of energy, dangerous mining practices,
hazardous chemicals, and poorly designed products that drive consumption of the
Earth’s resources. This hidden reality stands in stark contrast to the
forward-thinking, environmentally conscious image most IT companies project. (Greenpeace,
2017: 3)
The working conditions and environmental impacts folded into the fabric of schooling and
text-making - are all implicated in what goes on moment to moment; and what happens in the
moment (hyperlinks followed, screens tapped, etc) will shape what happens at other times
elsewhere as resources are manufactured, recruited, re-equipped or refuelled. A more
expanded, fluid take on event pushes us to keep re-focusing our analysis of what goes on, and
to keep pushing at spatial-temporal boundaries. Rather than focusing on patterns of human
activity - or what people do with things - this opens us up to think about the other things that
are going on that exceed the event, those things that are inter-imbricated with it as well as
those generated.
This process of continual re-framing, of combining an affective engagement with the tracing
14 will always exceed the sense we can make. However, thinking with literacy-as-event hints at
that which escapes more ordered accounts, holding together different registers, different ways
of knowing. This has an ethical dimension as ultimately a cut has to be made, and by making
this cut we exclude certain relations that could have been interrogated, nurtured or celebrated.
3. Implicit in the event are multiple potentialities
If we accept that event is constituted through multiple relations between people and things,
and that what happens is always beyond what we can perceive, then it follows that
socio-material-semiotic assemblings can be generative in unexpected ways. In describing her
experience of the act of writing StPierre (2014, p.378) refers to the ‘un-thought’ and what is
‘to come’, capturing the sense of setting out to write without any clear plans of what will
unfold, and of being surprised at what emerges. Words assemble with thought, feeling and
life and so meanings get generated and settle, sometimes in surprising ways. In another time
and place something else may have emerged. The act of writing then involves the ongoing
realisation of potentialities, many of which may never have been consciously apparent
beforehand. And as certain meanings and manifestations are realised, others disperse or are
left behind.
These reflections help articulate the potentialities inherent in all meaning-making practices.
Ehret, Hollett and Jocius write,
Literacy experiences, in all their vital materiality, are lived intensely while making
15 felt-thought through constructed contexts or mind-body-environment intersections
alone. Literacy in the making matters. (Ehret et al., 2016, p. 372)
Rather than working towards text and language as instantiations of life or commentaries on it,
this process emphasises the process of making meaning as part of life (Leander & Hollett,
2017). It recognises that in all literacy encounters, multiple potentialities exist, and meanings
may be felt or sensed as well as cognitively realised. This perspective invites literacy research
to focus more on the relations mediated through the process of making meaning: the new
collaborations, stories, conceptualisations, directions, intentions and so on that emerge as
people engage in making meanings, all of which can and often do turn out in unexpected
ways. Approaching literacy-as-event therefore facilitates our engagement with the
possibilities enabled through literacy, the affordances and limitations of form to mediate who
we are, what we want to do and want to be. It foregrounds how such possibilities can never
be completely planned but emerge as event. In another time, and in another place, something
else may have emerged. As certain meanings and manifestations are realised, others disperse
or are left behind. Sensitising ourselves to potentialities therefore may help us grasp not just
what has happened but also what might happen.
With multiplicities acknowledged in these ways, a focus on literacy-as-event not only
foregrounds how certain relations sustain, but also the potentialities of relations otherwise
imagined. It is a stance that leans towards new possibilities, etching out new kinds of
relations even within apparently highly structured sites. As well as inviting us to keep asking
what else is going on, it also prompts us to engage with what might happen next. Rather than
16 dynamically smudge it, so that the relational potential it tends toward appears’ (Massumi,
2011, p.52).
Literacy-as-event as heuristic
The idea of literacy-as-event aims to account for relational perspectives by pushing at the
boundaries of event in a number of ways: moving from socio-cultural to socio-material
relations, foregrounding in-between-ness rather than situatedness, and being as fascinated
with unpredictability as regularity. This stance approaches event as a momentary occurrence
with multiple, alternative or virtual possibilities, as always more than can be perceived or
conceived, replete with potentialities. It involves a shift in emphasis along a number of
dimensions as Table 1 illustrates.
[Insert Table 1 Moving from literacy event to literacy-as-event about here.]
In summary, literacy-as-event offers a generative heuristic for thinking with the notion of
event. It is at once more minor and more expansive than earlier conceptions of literacy event;
it considers what happens moment to moment, but sees written into these moments multiple
possible pasts and futures. It requires us to keep asking, what is going on, to slow down and
ponder the details, to acknowledge the multiplicity of meanings and possibilities that are
always immanent. Moreover literacy-as-event suggests an expansive, reflective, and
imaginative engagement with practice. Since researchers (and their materials) are also part of
17 Conclusion
Our proposed re-working of event might at first appear purely semantic. Why, one might
argue, is it useful to think in terms of event at all? Perhaps notions of event are incompatible
with the fluidity and permeability evoked by relational thinking? Surely more radical
thinking is needed in relation to methodological resources? While we support methodological
innovation, the urge to keep engaging with event is driven by a commitment to political work
that builds on the legacy of NLS. Pioneering research in literacy studies foregrounded
literacy events partly as a means of analysing how the workings of power played out in local
literacy practices, and through doing so challenged the individualist model of literacy that
dominates educational and public discourses.
The ways in which literacy researchers engage with education matters now as it always has
done, perhaps even more so in uncertain and difficult times, in new and rapidly changing
political and economic formations, and under the influence of neoliberalist educational
policies that reduce literacy to a set of skills. However, we side with Massumi (2015) who
argues that attempts to challenge the dominance of the market through the critical tradition
have been ineffective because they adopt ways of knowing that echo the ontologies that
uphold the status quo. Critical approaches are unlikely to disrupt existing ways of doing
things because, ‘in order to critique something in any kind of definite way you have to pin it
down’ (p.14), and this process may dissipate the generative potential that holds the possibility
to be otherwise. For Massumi, this capacity emerges partly through affective engagement
with the world, as people and things assemble in some ways and not others. This perspective
is useful in thinking about how educational provision always has the potential to be
18 But it also has implications for the ways in which we think and work with practice through
our research.
Classroom literacies - as our vignettes illustrate - are rich with potentialities. In such contexts,
practices may materialise in ways that are in line with mandated curricula, as children
produce texts that adhere to the specific criteria of standardised assessments, for example, but
they also emerge in ways that serve other purposes (see Maybin, 2007; Dyson, 1993). If
meaning making is always charged with multiple potentialities then so is literacy in
classrooms, regardless of how far policy-makers (or indeed teachers, researchers, or other
experts) seek to bound it. Literacy pedagogy may unfold in multiple ways and always has the
potential to generate the unexpected in the form of stories, relationships, transactions,
thoughts, meanings, ideas, and so on.
By thinking about literacy-as-event we move towards the unique and unpredictable effects of
social, material and semiotic emergence that lie at the heart of meaning making, gesturing
towards its fluid and elusive nature, and turning our attention towards this sense of
potentiality. This highlights what might be possible; it provides a way of sensing what else
might get produced if things assembled in other ways; and hints at what is virtually there. It
does this through an affective-reflective engagement with literate encounters. It may also help
us better articulate and develop research methods that bring indeterminacy and affect into
play, and that work with complexity rather than seeking to order it through linear accounts.
Importantly, such work needs to be approached with an ethic of care that involves ongoing
review of what happens and what is generated as people and things come into relation. With
all this in mind, we propose that engaging with literacy-as-event holds the promise of
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